The Heavenly Table(84)

“I’ll take one of them.” Chimney pulled out a twenty-dollar gold piece and laid it on the counter.

“How many days do you plan to stay?”

“Not for sure yet. At least a couple.”

The clerk opened the guest registry and told Chimney to sign his name. His stomach roiled just a little when he saw the new guest make two sloppy X’s. Since he was a small child, Roland’s hobby had been penmanship, and though he should have been hardened to it by now, encountering someone this early in the day who couldn’t even print his name was almost too much to take. Just last week, a group of wealthy widows had asked him if he’d give a talk about the Palmer Method at one of their monthly soirées. By the end of the current century, he had predicted during the question and answer session that followed, typewriters and other gadgetry would make artful handwriting obsolete. His pronouncement practically sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and two of the oldest ladies had to be revived with smelling salts and tiny dabs of sweet sherry on their dry, crinkled lips. Mrs. Grady, the hostess, had gently admonished him for his negativity, but what he’d said was true all the same. Why, he doubted if even the bare rudiments of cursive would be taught in the classroom in another fifty years or so. He handed the boy his change and a key. “Room thirty-one, on the third floor.”

Chimney started for the stairway, then came back to the desk. “Any idy where I might find me a whore?” he asked.

Roland already had his nose buried in the book again, an introduction to French grammar. He looked up with a startled expression on his face, as if he had been caught in some embarrassing act, which was nearly the case. If the old widows who had practically swooned over his talent with pen and ink had known to what depths he had recently sunk, he wouldn’t have been allowed on their property, let alone to sit with them and sip tea from a dainty cup all afternoon. Though his wages at the Warner barely kept him afloat, he had taken out what was for him a substantial loan and visited the Whore Barn several times over the past few weeks to lay with a young trollop who spoke French. Peaches had taken his virginity away from him while whispering “très bien” over and over into his ear, and now he was infatuated with her. He covered the book with his hand and quickly said to Chimney, “I don’t know anything about that.” That was the bad thing about falling in love with a whore; anyone with four bits in their pocket was a potential rival. It was driving him crazy, the number of men he imagined rubbing their rough beards and dirty paws over that pale, beautiful body. His plan to win her over by mastering the language of love had seemed brilliant at first, but it was proving more difficult than he’d expected. He had tossed and turned all last night worrying about it, finally deciding, just before his mother called him down to breakfast, that if he hoped to make sense out of the verb conjugations, he was going to have to hire a tutor. It didn’t occur to him until later that morning that if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to afford to f*ck Peaches anymore—that is, unless maybe he got another loan. To be in love, he was beginning to realize, meant being mired in one goddamn mess after another.

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Roland said. He looked around nervously, then offered Chimney a handbill from a stack on the counter. “Here, if you need something to do, go over to the Majestic and see the Lewis Family.”

“What’s the Majestic?”

“Only one of the finest theaters in the Midwest,” Roland said. “Right up the street and around the corner.”

“What do they do, this family you’re talkin’ about?”

“Sing, dance, tell jokes, you name it,” the clerk said. “Good clean fun. They come through here at least three or four times a year. Just seeing Mr. Bentley is worth the price of admission.”

“Who’s he?”

“He’s the monkey,” the clerk said.

Chimney studied the picture of the five grinning stooges and the primate dressed in a little sailor suit. Unless that monkey was putting out, he wasn’t interested, but it sounded like something Cob might get a kick out of. Hell, he’d probably go nuts over such a thing. He thought about the pet squirrel they’d kept for a week or so that summer they picked cotton in Alabama, and how Cob had bawled like a baby when he woke up one morning to discover Pearl frying it up in a pan. Wouldn’t even eat breakfast he was so upset, which was the first time that had ever happened. “Mind if I keep this?” he asked.

“Go ahead.”

Chimney stuck the paper in his pocket and went on up the stairs. After taking a glance about the room, he hid the two Smith & Wessons under the mattress and walked down to a store called Burton’s that sold men’s clothing and accessories. He bought a pair of soft black-and-gray-striped trousers and a lavender shirt and a derby and a new pair of shoes, along with a pair of long johns and some soap and a bottle of rosewater. On the way back to the hotel, he stopped at a barbershop called O’Malley’s and got a shave and a haircut for a quarter. An old man, bald as a turtle, sat in a chair by the window, half asleep. “Any idy where I might find me a whore?” Chimney asked as the barber lathered his face.

“Jesus Christ, son, just look around,” the barber said as he began scraping some peach fuzz off the boy’s skinny neck. “The world’s crawling with ’em. I ought to know. I married one, didn’t I, Jim?”